Clarity
by erikjavert24601
Summary: Sparks fly as Erik and Christine take the stage together, and music unlocks their passion. But what happens when the gendarmes open fire? (Oneshot - many apologies for the mistaken categorization and to those of you who had your hopes up!)


I knew something was afoot with the very first notes of the scene. I could say I knew something was wrong, but that would never do. There could be nothing wrong with Erik singing Don Juan. The part was him to the very core. Erik had breathed himself into every phrase, every word, every tortured sin and every plea for grace. The role was Erik's soul come to life and treading the boards of a stage.

Of course I knew it was him from the first instant. Piangi was good, but there was no voice on Earth to match Erik's. Besides, how many times had that voice come through my mirror to teach me, and guide me, and comfort me? Erik's voice sang me asleep and was woven through my dreams, into my very thoughts. I heard Erik's voice every time I sang, for his voice was also mine. That was the gift he had given me: Taken my stuff and formed it in his image.

And now the two were on stage together, singing the music that was always meant to be sung this way, by the same instrument in two bodies. Could the audience hear it, I wondered? They knew me well enough, but they had never heard him. Could they hear that identical ringing placement, or the way my phrasing echoed his?

It would tax description to convey what it was like on that stage with him. To make someone outside myself understand how we passed a lifetime of feeling in fifteen minutes, in twenty pages-worth of music.

A cliché is nonesuch if it is true, and when we sang together the world faded away. We stood not on a stage in Paris but in the dark stone hall of a Spanish castle. We had no audience, but were entirely alone, flinging energy and music back and forth between us like electricity on a wire. There was no Erik, only Don Juan, driven to destroy goodness and beauty even as he desperately craved them. There was no Christine, only the virginally pure Aminta, longing for deflowerment.

Never had I had such a scene-partner. I burned and sparked but Erik carried us both on an inexorable wave of energy and passion. There was no room for thought, no space to worry about rhythm and entrances. Erik was a storm, a force of nature and to play off him was exhilarating freedom, unmediated emotion. All was true; neither of us was acting, but simply feeling. I saw him with new eyes. Not an angel, not a teacher or a father, not even a deformed madman, but as a man, whole and entire with a human's flaws and a human's needs, despite everything that made him extraordinary and supernatural. It was not Erik before me, Erik whom I had known. It was some man, this Don Juan with the long line of his thigh and the heated triangle of skin beneath his open shirt, and large, dexterous hands that clenched and unclenched. I suddenly understood that Erik was a man like –

I was about to say "like Raoul," but the comparison would be unforgivable. Raul may have been watching from the wings or from some box – I wasn't sure where – but he was not there with us. Raoul didn't even exist.

The scene became a duet and the duet crescendoed into a maelstrom of sound and passion that even in the writing Erik had known the audience would not be able to bear for long.

I relished the completeness of Erik's dramatic genius as the benevolent quietude of the _subito piano_ washed over the space like a balm and the theme of _Avec tes yeux_ cleansed the atmosphere like a breath of fresh air.

The shift seemed to break the spell, because the edges of my vision seemed to fade back into focus and I was again aware of the audience out front, of the company in the wings… And of the guns trained down from the balcony.

Did Erik feel it too, the change in the air? I'll never know but I think he must have. There must have been some returning to himself, some sense of transformation from Don Juan, past Phantom and Angel and all his other incarnations, back into just Erik. Just Erik and just Christine.

What else on earth could have made him fling back the hood of his cape and reveal the mask, gleaming in the hot lights of the stage like a beacon?

Like a target.

I caught my breath and heard myself echoed a thousandfold out in the house.

The pit sounded a minor chord and Erik turned toward me. I saw his eyes flick upward and take in the guns with a glance. Then for the first time that night, his eyes met mine in earnest. He started to sing.

There is no vocal line at that part of the score but it hardly mattered. This was Erik's opus and he was still in control, for the moment. The theme was from the love song in the second act, the one Aminta sings with Martín, the would-be lover so youthful and effeminate that he is played by a mezzo in trousers.

_With your eyes, give me peace.  
With your lips, grant me grace.  
This is all I ask,  
From now until the end of days…_

_With your eyes give me peace… _His voice reached across the space between us, which he closed with one step, then another.

_With your lips, grant me grace… _Never had I felt words speak to my very heart. In opera characters speak only in music, and here Erik had made an opera of life, singing words to me with no barrier between their melody and their meaning. For the first time since I had known him, Erik was saying precisely what he meant. In a way I suppose he was setting himself free.

_This is all I ask…_ His gaze held mine as he drew nearer. Arrested, hypnotized, I couldn't have looked away if I'd wanted to.

_From now until the end of days. _The music swelled and with a deliberate gesture he caught up my hand, removed the ring from his finger, and slid it onto mine. His eyes blazed with daring elation, and I felt something inside of me bursting, swelling in response. In agreement. A smile I could neither suppress nor control was rising to my lips.

It would have been impossible to say who kissed whom, but I've always rather thought Erik kissed me. Years later I still relish the thought of him crowning his achievement with such a magnificent stroke. Claiming me as his own before all the world, in the face of propriety, of caution, of sense, with a kiss to end all kisses. His very first.

His lips were warm against mine, surprisingly so – why had I always through him so cold? Kissing Erik was completion. If anything had been missing, any piece left ajar, it slid into place. It was a moment of complete clarity and unlooked-for simplicity.

But the next moments seemed a series of distinct and broken events.

Our kiss lasted only a few moments before I felt his mouth ripped away from mine, seeming to take a piece of my soul with it.

I stumbled backward, eyes opening, to see the mask replaced by the face. The Face. I blinked dumbly for a moment, confused and a bit stunned, until I could comprehend what had happened. At once I saw Raoul standing there on stage with us, with a wild look of triumph and Erik's wig and mask in hand. With the other he was pointing at Erik, now staggering backwards and utterly exposed, and though I couldn't seem to hear him – the audience had erupted with noise when Erik's mask had come off – I could see he was shouting "Shoot him!"

I don't even remember deciding what to do. One moment I see myself watching the scene between Erik and Raoul, and the next I had flung myself upon Erik, my arms wrapping around his neck and holding tight, like some awful parody of a lover's embrace.

I remember that, and then the report of gunfire.

* * *

Erik had always relied on his ability to react; his instincts and his reflexes were the only reason he'd been able to drag himself through life this long. But even he had to admit that events had entirely overtaken him. One shock after another. First the joy on Christine's face as he declared himself to her, then her lips on his, receiving him, _returning_ his passion. Broken so quickly by that feeling of cool air on his face, that too-familiar, terrifying sensation of exposure. He'd barely registered Raoul's presence – where had he come from? He'd been too overwhelmed with the feeling of Christine's kiss even to notice the boy – before his lightning-quick mind remembered the guns, and he knew what was coming next.

Except he'd been wrong. Not entirely so; the gendarmes had indeed commenced target practice aimed at his heart. What he, for all his genius, had failed to account for, was Christine.

Suddenly she was in his arms, pressed against and clinging to him, and his heart seemed to plunge in opposite directions. He felt a guilt-tinged rush of elation at the gesture and its implications. Christine, the darling child he had roughly dragged into damaged womanhood, was defending him. No one had ever – no, best not, because as soon as he registered this his mind leapt to the dozen or so muskets trained upon them. Realization struck of what she'd just done, and his heart seemed to cease beating and plummet like lead.

It was then that instinct, mercifully, kicked in. Gathering up Christine, he used the Punjab lasso to flip the lever to the trap door. Piangi had been using it every night in rehearsing the fifth act finale, in which Don Juan descends into Hell consumed in flames. The flame effect was activated with the lever, and he and Christine plunged beneath the stage in a swirl of white smoke and red-orange silk. A cushion was waiting for them, but the stagehands on that level were either too stunned to react, or unaware of the drama that had been playing out above. Without pausing to think he swung Christine up over his shoulder and ran.

He ran blindly downwards, his instinct seeking safety in the dark, deep places, like some animal pursued by hunters and going to ground. But even as he went his mind began to race along other avenues – Christine was hurt. He should take her to a doctor. But the danger; he was a wanted man and he had no mask. Surely he had as much skill as any Parisian quack. But he couldn't be sure. He didn't even known where she had been hit. He couldn't take the chance of treating her himself. He must take her to a doctor. But he was a wanted man. Damn the consequences. Christine was hurt. Christine was hurt. Christine was hurt…

That thought seemed to swell and push all the others aside until he couldn't really keep track of his logic, only keep running downwards. _This_, thought some dim voice. _This must be what panic feels like_.

But eventually, another sound broke through the red haze of fear and adrenaline. Christine was struggling against him, trying to get his attention.

Seeing that he'd reached the third basement and not hearing any sound of pursuit from behind, he knelt and gently set Christine on her feet. His hands shaking and his heart beating a tattoo, he meant to ease her down to recline in his arms, but he never got the chance.

She swayed on her feet, vision going suddenly black as a consequence of being upside down. She reached out blindly.

Erik caught her hand and placed his other on her back, steadying her and also drawing her to him. Where had he learned the gestures of affection? He never dreamed being a lover could come so naturally.

Christine clutched his hand and leaned against him for a moment, but then the dizziness passed and she righted herself.

Erik watched her, astonished, checking her over automatically to assess the damage. He circled around her, trying to find the wound. Nothing he could see, but blood was streaming from a wound on her neck, and it had dripped upward over her face while he'd carried her.

"Where are you hurt?" He asked urgently.

She shook her head; she couldn't see the blood. "It, it stings…" she said, putting a hand up to her neck and looking almost puzzled at the blood that came away on her fingers.

Erik fumbled at his own neck for his cravat, cursing his fingers for their sudden clumsiness. His hands _were_ shaking. Finally he ripped it from his neck and started wiping the blood away as best he could.

"Is it bad?" She asked. "It doesn't feel bad. But I've never…" She trailed off. She'd been about to say, "I've never been shot before" but it seemed too bizarre.

"It's," said Erik, stepping back a bit and surveying the damage. "It's just a scratch. Grazed." He was speaking automatically. "Just here." He reached up, not touching her, his hand hovering in the air just a breath away from her skin. "It's nothing," he said breathlessly.

"Here," he said, suddenly remembering himself. He took the bloody cloth and folded it, then pressed it to her neck and drew her hand up to hold it there.

"That's it?" said Christine, searching his face. It was true she felt nothing but the hot, sharp pain along the side of her neck, but she had always heard that shock sometimes kept injured people from feeling the pain of terrible wounds.

"That's… That's it," said Erik, and a sudden shadow passed across his face and he looked disconcertingly as if he was about to cry.

They were both thinking the same thing, how very close it had come. The gap between what was possible and what was real seemed to yawn before them, together with all those things that didn't bridge it – wholeness, love, happiness, the future. All those things were, and, but for the space of an inch, might not have been.

The sight of the fear in Erik's face and the enormity of what they both were realizing brought tears stinging to Christine's eyes. She drew toward him like a magnet. They both felt that sense of need, of the absolute requirement of joining. She had never clung so tightly, her arms reaching up around his neck and his arms coming naturally and automatically to circle her back and hold her fast to him. Neither quite appreciated that it was the very position they had found themselves in only minutes ago, but a veritable lifetime away.

Suddenly they were both aware of the sound of footsteps and shouts coming faintly, but ever louder, from above.

"We have to go," said Christine, slightly muffled into Erik's neck.

Erik drew back, searching her face.

"We do?" he said, with just the slightest emphasis on the first word. "You can still go up there, circle back around. Say that I forced you, that you escaped from me… It's not you they're after."

Christine smiled slightly, almost sadly, and shook her head.

"We have to go."

She took his hand.


End file.
